Raynaldo Rivera, 20, was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona on Tuesday, which was six days after a federal grand jury in California released an indictment that charged him with unauthorized impairment of a protected computer and conspiracy. Rivera is suspected of adopting nicknames on the Internet like "royal," "neuron" and "wildicv" and using a proxy server to cover up his IP address, thus concealing his identity.

More specifically, the indictment says Rivera broke into Sony Pictures' computer systems in May and June 2011 and stole important information, which was then posted publicly on LulzSec's website and announced on its Twitter. LulzSec managed to publish the names, addresses, birth dates, emails, passwords and phone numbers of Sony customers that entered company-promoted contests. The breach, which hit Sony's pocket for $600,000, was meant to exploit security flaws in Sony's systems.

"From a single injection we accessed EVERYTHING," said LulzSec at the time of the hack. "Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?"

The indictment added that an SQL injection attack was used to commit the breach, which is a hack completed by using portions of SQL statements in a Web form entry field in order to make the Web site accept a new rogue SQL command to the database.

This is the second accused LulzSec member to be arrested in the Sony Pictures breach. The first was Cody Kretsinger, 24, who pleaded guilty to his role in the Sony breach back in April.

an i bet your the kinda guy that leave the front door of your house open and then gets mad cause someone "broke in" an stole your tv...Some "punk kid" shouldn't be able to circumvent the security of a multi-million dollar company,who's job it is to protect its customers...

That example holds no water since that "someone" wasn't suppose to be in the house in the first place. He is breaking an entering. It doesn't matter if the front door is unlocked. And no company can completely make sure that its systems are 100% hack proof because such a thing doesn't exist. Granted, Sony's firewall are piss-poor to say the least but that doesn't excuse punks from stealing personal information of customers. It doesn't hurt Sony as much as it hurts the customers which now have to deal with potential identity theft.

i agree with dozer13 .... first, sony violated rights of paid customers to run linux over sony hw (I wish same guns turned to apple too). also the house keeping thing ... Next time people protest on roads against govt etc, i will have the right to kick them off the road having my tax dollars used in its construction, just like i dont want someone on my house/property.

So if Sony does something you deem is illegal you have the right to do something criminal? That is broken logic. As for your remark about protesters; if we go by your logic, they would have the right to kick you back in the balls because they probably payed taxes as well. So unless you somehow payed for the whole road, which then you can kick anyone you want off of it, your example is flawed.

Don't be an idiot. Yes, you SHOULD be mad if someone illegally enters your house and steals your possessions, lock or no lock. It's still theft whether the thief had to break in or walk in.

This "punk kid" knew exactly what he was doing and he knew it was illegal. Yet he did it anyhow and published all the personal data he illegally copied on the LulzSec website. And then he announced he had done so on Twitter to show off and spread the word!

He didn't do all this out of some moral obligation to punish Sony. He did it so he could have his 15 seconds of fame. Well, if his 15 seconds of fame turns into 15 years of federal prison, don't expect too much sympathy out of me or the people whose data he illegally published.

Nobody put a gun to his head and forced him to break into Sony's database and then publish the data. He brought this all on himself and now he has to deal with the consequences.